"After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die."
— E.B. White (Charlotte's Web)

"All children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story. "
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"The only sin is the sin of being born"
— Samuel Beckett

"I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers to the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the begging from the shape of later events. - Vida Winter"
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth."
— Erma Bombeck

"My mother groaned, my father wept,
into the dangerous world I leapt."
— William Blake

"Season late, day late, sun just down, and the sky
Cold gunmetal but with a wash of live rose, and she,
From water the color of sky except where
Her motion has fractured it to shivering splinters of silver,
Rises. Stands on the raw grass. Against
The new-curdling night of spruces, nakedness
Glimmers and, at bosom and flank, drips
With fluent silver. The man,

Some ten strokes out, but now hanging
Motionless in the gunmetal water, feet
Cold with the coldness of depth, all
History dissolving from him, is
Nothing but an eye. Is an eye only. Sees

The body that is marked by his use, and Time's,
Rise, and in the abrupt and unsustaining element of air,
Sway, lean, grapple the pond-bank. Sees
How, with that posture of female awkwardness that is,
And is the stab of, suddenly perceived grace, breasts bulge down in
The pure curve of their weight and buttocks
Moon up and, in swelling unity,
Are silver and glimmer. Then

The body is erect, she is herself, whatever
Self she may be, and with an end of the towel grasped in each hand,
Slowly draws it back and forth across back and buttocks, but
With face lifted toward the high sky, where
The over-wash of rose color now fails. Fails, though no star
Yet throbs there. The towel, forgotten,
Does not move now. The gaze
Remains fixed on the sky. The body,

Profiled against the darkness of spruces, seems
To draw to itself, and condense in its whiteness, what light
In the sky yet lingers or, from
The metallic and abstract severity of water, lifts. The body,
With the towel now trailing loose from one hand, is
A white stalk from which the face flowers gravely toward the high sky.
This moment is non-sequential and absolute, and admits
Of no definition, for it
Subsumes all other, and sequential, moments, by which
Definition might be possible. The woman,

Face yet raised, wraps,
With a motion as though standing in sleep,
The towel about her body, under her breasts, and,
Holding it there hieratic as lost Egypt and erect,
Moves up the path that, stair-steep, winds
Into the clamber and tangle of growth. Beyond
The lattice of dusk-dripping leaves, whiteness
Dimly glimmers, goes. Glimmers and is gone, and the man,

Suspended in his darkling medium, stares
Upward where, though not visible, he knows
She moves, and in his heart he cries out that, if only
He had such strength, he would put his hand forth
And maintain it over her to guard, in all
Her out-goings and in-comings, from whatever
Inclemency of sky or slur of the world's weather
Might ever be. In his heart he cries out. Above

Height of the spruce-night and heave of the far mountain, he sees
The first star pulse into being. It gleams there.

I do not know what promise it makes him. "
— Robert Penn Warren

"There are those wonderful moments of clarity in life when one is reminded how irreparably flawed we humans are. Once, when I was nineteen, on the subway in Boston I lost my balance slightly and bumped into an elderly woman. I quickly apologized and she replied, "Well, hold on to something, stupid." There it is. That's it. That's it in a nutshell. I don't want to sound negative, but I think every fetus should be shown a film of that incident, maybe projected up on the uterine wall, and then asked if it wants to come out. I am a strong believer in a woman's right to choose, but I also think that in the last trimester, the kid should be given every opportunity to back out."
— Paula Poundstone

"$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding."
— Frank Oski, MD, Professor and Director, Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

"Failing to listen to the woman is one of the biggest mistakes a practitioner can make."
— Helen Varney

"He came into the world like a delivery that no one knew what to do with, and nobody wanted to sign for."
— Obert Skye (Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo)

"We have a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful; it’s that women are strong."
— Laura Stavoe Harm

"…brotherhood of the firstborn, which can be both a blessing and a curse: the overwhelming attention to the detail of their lives and development. The expectations that run too high: being the bridge between adults and children, one foot in either place and the accompanying hollow lonely feeling of being nowhere."
— Whitney Otto (How to Make an American Quilt)

"Obstetricians and hospitals have found that high-intervention birth, warranted or not, is very profitable. So there is a tremendous financial incentive to bypass the clinically optimal approach, and opt for convenience and profit. For example, many hospitals across the country have eliminated facility-based midwifery practices simply because the low-intervention approach, while clinically sound, does not bring in as many dollars."
— Tonya Jamois, president of ICAN

"My grandfather used to say to me ‘After you’re born, everything else is a bonus.’ But some people never get born"
— Gail Madonia

"It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet."
— Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)

"It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor."
— Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)

"The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard."
— Sebastian Barry (The Secret Scripture)

"The only reality that exist in life,
is birth and death, in-between we go through the process of evolution."
— Moses Pereira

"The feminine side of all species is most beautiful,
for the powers of creation is vested in the female form."
— Moses Pereira

"Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers--strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength."
— Barbara Katz Rothman

"It is as great a crime to leave a woman alone in her agony and deny her relief from her suffering as it is to insist upon dulling the consciousness of a natural mother who desires above all things to be aware of the final reward of her efforts, whose ambition is to be present, in full possession of her senses, when the infant she already adores greets her with its first loud cry and the soft touch of its restless body upon her limbs."
— Grantly Dick-Read

"'Yes, contractions can be intense,' Noura continues. 'But your bodies are designed to handle it. And what you must remember is, it's a positive pain. I'm sure you'll both agree?' She looks over at Mum and Janice.
'POSITIVE?' Janice looks up, horrified. 'Ooh, no, dear. Mine was agony. 24 hours in the cruel summer heat. I wouldn't wish it on any of you poor girls.'
'But there are natural methods you can use,' Noura puts in quickly. 'I'm sure you found that rocking and changing position helped with the contractions.
'I wouldn't have said so,' Mum says kindly.
'Or a warm bath?' Noura suggets, smile tightening.
'A bath? Dear, when you're gripped by agony and wanting to die, a bath doesn't really help!'
As I glance around the room I can see that all the girls' faces have frozen. Most of the mens' too."
— Sophie Kinsella (Shopaholic and Baby)

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval"
— Santayana

"If she'd spaced her children out and had eleven babies in eleven years, she would have been no better than her own mother and sisters: irresponsible, a welfare cheat, another bit of Sawdust Lane white trash. But as luck would have it, she'd had them all at once, and now she was, overnight, middle-class. And respectable."
— Sheri Holman (The Mammoth Cheese)

"Childbirth is normal until proven otherwise."
— Peggy Vincent (Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife)

"For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.
"
— Bhagavad Gita

"In no way can we improve a normal pregnancy and labour in a healthy woman; we can only change it, but not for the better."
— G. J. Kloosterman

"Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it."
— Rohinton Mistry (A Fine Balance)

"Among industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks 29th in infant survival."
— Jennifer Block

"To those who say it is just not possible to birth naturally and without pain, I say "But what if we're right? Wouldn't it be wonderful?" "
— Lorne R. Campbell, M.D.

"The midwife considers the miracle of childbirth as normal, and leaves it alone unless there's trouble. The obstetrician normally sees childbirth as trouble; if he leaves it alone, it's a miracle."
— Sheila Stubbs

"It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor."
— Ina May Gaskin (Ina May's Guide to Childbirth)